Jim Goad: ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Screams’

For two decades running—ever since a friend sent me a VHS tape of them harassing the fuck out of frightened passersby in Times Square—my “favorite” hate group has been the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, notably the screamingly belligerent iterations that infest street corners in the Northeast and Midwest bellowing through microphones and megaphones about “crackers” and “faggots” and “so-called Negroes.”

For starters, I like the way they, well…goad people. I also enjoy their pharaonic sense of couture, which is an odd mix of Arabian Nights and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.